Francis Drake's Pop Armada

Francis Drake Pop Armada

I have been cast adrift onto a tiny floating island made from Adidas popper trousers, Fat willy t-shirts and Sony Walkmans. Stretching out into unknown, uncharted, mythical waters, away from a mainland that was once so familiar. Forced into a maritime exodus all because of the Pop star and fellow seafarer Sir Francis Drake and his recent seizure of the Music charts, which has now become a distant sun to me. 

For how the hell have I not heard a song that has been No1 for 16 weeks. How? How can the most popular song in the country that has surely been played thousands of times on the radio, that has been sung along to on mobile phones at bus shelters, that on the evidence of a 16 week chart domination, a sizeable chunk of the population must know and love. How have I not come into contact with it?

Have I been counting Acolytes in deep caverns for the past 4 months? No. Have I spent the last four months inspecting my ears with my fingers while humming the Coronation Street theme non stop? No. Have I been in a coma after a foolish decision to ride a baking tray down a flight of stairs? No

So how has this happened? How could I be that much out of the loop of popular consensus? Surely a 16 week no1 song is inescapable, unavoidable slipping perniciously into the public consciousness like a celebrity sex scandal. Played relentlessly in every shopping centre, television montage and aerobics fitness class.

How have I missed this and isn’t Francis Drake dead? I thought he died of dysentery, fending off the Spanish navy somewhere near Panama? When did he launch both a thousand ships and a hit record? When?

It’s not that I’m immune to historical figures having smash hits. I remember the Robin Hood song. I remember it well. Massive it was, everyone sang it, you couldn’t escape it. 18 weeks at No1. ‘I know it’s true, everything I do, I do it for you’ ruining every 90’s wedding going, but I knew it.

Also it’s not that I’m adverse to the big hits. I was there with the Wet Wet Wets, ‘Love was around me’ that summer. Four weddings but the song refused to die. And I knew Rhianna’s song about selling umbrellas. All over that like a rash, bought a ton of umbrellas that summer, and a Parasol.

And it’s not that I was completely out of touch with the Modern charts even without Top of the Pop tarts I still had a foot in.

I knew the recent Justin Bieber songs. I may have hated myself for liking them so much, but fling enough shit at someone and eventually they forget their own smell. So, Why am I not covered in the content of Drake’s dysentery ridden bowels? Why?

And why sea shanties? How did that become the latest music trend? Maybe I could learn, ‘Ro Ho Ho, and a bottle of Rum’ and all that, I could try.

Oh who am I kidding? I’m a lost dog holding his missing poster, there’s no hope left. I’m so far off the musical map now, I buried deep in the page crease.

All because of a Sailor, a dead sailor, whatever next?

The only option now is to drift off to find new shores. Search for a forgotten time. Where hopefully there are people that when you ask them do you know Timmy mallet, they don’t look at you perplexed that there was once was a man that hit you with a foam hammer and that was children’s entertainment at it’s finest. Somewhere faraway where Robin hood is still No1.